News, plans and plots regarding my 18th century Imagi-Nations campaign set in the fictitious nations of Syldavia and Borduria, my variations on a theme of Hergé

King Stépan IV's pleasure dome at Kragoneidin, on the shores of Lake Polishov

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

King Ivan's Campaign of 1683

Shozod, the
dusty Bordurian capital located in the Danube basin, had been transformed into
an Ottoman military camp by the early spring of 1683. On behalf of the Sultan, Kara Moustafa Pasha had
amassed over 150000 men under arms from such places as Rumelia, Bulgaria, the
Bosporus, Anatolia and the exotic oriental fringes of the vast Ottoman Empire; by
early May, these troops were billeted in the city of Shozod, capital of Borduria
and awaited orders there, or were on their way.
This astonishing army was rapidly stripping Borduria barren of food and
fodder, despite the seemingly endless trains of wagons, mules and even camels bearing
supplies for the army. Kara’s Mustafa’s orders
were to subjugate the upper Danube and the Kingdom of Hungary (comprising the
territory of northern Hungary, now in rebellion against the Habsburgs; southern
Hungary, or Transylvania, was already an Ottoman vassal), and secure a
defensible frontier within Austrian territory.
Kara’s Mustafa was an extremely ambitious and capable man who had risen
from nothing to become second only to the Sultan; his vanity and ambition were
his Achilles heel however; he had already laid out plans to exceed his orders
and to take as much of the territory of the Imperium as possible (to his own
advantage) by striking its fat underbelly, the capital of Vienna. The Habsburg Imperium crushed, he dreamed of
turning south, of taking Venice and invading Italy, even of taking Rome itself.

The Pasha took
stock of the reserves of men and materiel available to him and of the time he
would need to win his major immediate objectives for the campaign. Heavy snow and then protracted rain in the
early spring had saturated the roads and slowed transport of supplies and his
plan was now running late. New supplies
could be wrung out of Hungary and the southern Austrian provinces once crops
were ready, but even maraudage takes
time, as do sieges of heavily fortified cities. Kara Mustafa knew that he had
to move quickly to be in secure winter quarters in Austria by autumn. Nevertheless, he had not yet gained complete
control over the Balkans. Syldavia,
Ragusia and the Venetian client state of Dalmatia were of some strategic
importance in the long term but were not essential immediately, nor were they
real threats to Ottoman control of the Danube.
Surely their fall would be inevitable, as would that of Venice itself,
once the power of the Imperium was broken.
So, on the 20th of May, 1683, Kara Mustafa commanded his army
to march north into Hungary, where it would meet up with the forces of allied
Wallachia and Transylvania, and thence march on toward Austria. The Ottoman threat thereby passed Syldavia by
and King Ivan gained a reprieve.

Having ignored Kara
Mustafa’s attempt to coerce a Syldavian surrender and having in fact taken up
arms against the Ottomans (technically alongside the Venetians), King Ivan I
was preparing himself for the worst, a large-scale invasion of Syldavia from
Borduria. A more cautious man would
likely have bowed to Kara Mustafa rather than face the rather awesome force he
had assembled in 1683. Unable to think
of backing down, King Ivan put his regiments on alert and drilled them endlessly,
he saw that fortifications were supplied and ordered patrols to comb the
frontier for evidence of an invasion. Ivan
also brought up the strength of his army by training new drafts of men and by
calling militia companies to assemble at regional forts where they were amalgamated
into auxiliary battalions.

In August 1683,
finding the Bordurian frontier only lightly guarded, Ivan ventured a proactive
move and sent nearly his entire army into the field. A major force (including the King’s
Musketeers, the Wladir and Ragusia infantry regiments, the Hum militia, the irregular
“Grenzer” company, the Cuirassier Regiment, a squadron of irregular scout
cavalry and artillery (with a handful of heavy siege guns, recently obtained at
a good price from the Venetians) moved up the Wladir river from
Djordjevaro. With them, Ivan forced his
way through the small, fortified frontier towns of Mocjiro and Orehovo on the
north bank of the Wladir river and finally laid siege to Klow itself. If it
could be taken, Klow (and the adjacent St. Vladimir Grad fortress) presented
strong points from which the Ottomans might be better resisted when they returned.

Typically ambitious,
King Ivan also sent a strong detachment (consisting of the Travunia and Zeta
infantry regiment, elements of the Ragusia, Travunia and Zeta militias, the
Dragoon Regiment and the small squadron of the Household “Husjzar” Guards
(acting as hussar scouts) north over the St. Mihailo Pass with the intention to
cut off eventual reinforcement or resupply of Klow from the east. This force stormed
the weak Bordurian fortification guarding the pass and then descended into the
Wladrujan plain. While the presence of
this second force did cause the Bordurians distress, and paralysed the
Bordurian detachments in Istow and Neidzdrow, Ivan found that he was unable to
remain in effective contact with it. The
force bumbled about for a time before moving, as intended, to occupy the small town
of Ottokardin, east of Klow, which controlled principal routes of access to the
city from the east.

No real relief force for
Klow was mustered immediately by the Bordurians, as they were weakened by their
commitments to Kara Mustafa’s army and caught unprepared by King Ivan’s offensive. The undermanned Bordurian garrison of Klow
proved to be determined, however, and the Syldavian army amply showed its
inexperience in this sort of technical warfare.
Furthermore, the Syldavian army was short on suitable artillery
necessary to force the issue and lacked professional engineers. The direction of the siege rested in the
hands of several of the new émigré officers, largely in the artillery (a branch
overlooked by King Ivan to this point) who possessed some idea of the
principals of military engineering. The
siege endured nearly three weeks before the artillery officers had trenches and
a redoubt in place that could bring the army’s handful of heavy cannons to bear
on a vulnerable portion of Klow’s walls and on a city gate. Once these were breached, Ivan launched an
assault which resulted in a short but sanguine battle that ended with the
Syldavian troops taking control of a section of walls and opening the city
gates. Bordurian resistance collapsed at
that point and the city was taken.

A 19th century artist's impression of the entry of King Ivan into Klow, 1683. Some details are erroneous. Count Nikolai Mikolic, shown mounted at left centre, was not present nor were the Household Husjzar horse (in yellow and red uniform), and the King's Musketeer Regiment (background, wearing blue uniform) were still wearing round hats). Nevertheless uniform colours are thought to be accurate.

It was a day of great
rejoicing in Syldavia and in Klow, when Ivan entered the old capital city of
the Almazoutian dynasty. He was the
first Syldavian king to do so since the Ottoman conquest of Wladruja in
1430. The downtrodden city, which still remembered
well its former days of glory, turned out to welcome Ivan. The mood of the countryside was more mixed,
however. Communities of old-time
Syldavian farmer families flocked to the King’s banner, while those of more
recent settlers, from Borduria and the Ottoman empire, installed since the
Ottoman conquest were anxious at best.
Some of these, including families descending from janissaries and
holders of timar feudal holdings,
packed up their households into wagons and streamed off into Polishov as
refugees rather than remain.

A Bordurian relief
force was, in fact, being amassed as Klow fell; its advance was halted when scouts
reported the presence of the second Syldavian force in Moltuja, which was
assumed to be waiting to entrap the relief column. A second halt came when news arrived
regarding the siege of Vienna.
Incredibly, Kara Moustafa’s siege had been broken by the counter-attack
of a united Austrian-Polish army under King Jan Sobieski and Archduke Charles
of Lorraine. Even harder to believe was
the news that the Ottoman army was routed with huge losses at Vienna and that its
ruined remains were streaming in chaos back south toward Shozod with the
Austrians hot on their heels. The Bordurians
were stretched very thin as the majority of their army went with Kara Mustafa
to the disaster of Vienna (though one imagines that the noted Bordurian talent
self-preservation would bring some of those soldiers home…). The Bordurian pasha, Hassan Muhtar, still on
his hurried way home from Vienna, was in no position to intervene directly and
so district commanders in Borduria were forced into a very defensive posture to
protect Borduria’s northern frontier as well as the provinces of Polishov and
Zympathia. Accordingly, the relief
column intended for Klow was used to reinforce the St. Vladimir Grad fort. The weak and now isolated Bordurian posts in
Moltuja, Wladruja and Zympathia had to fend for themselves for the time being.

Theatre of Ivan's campaign of 1683, showing approximate routes of his two attacking forces along the Wladir River (left) and over the St. Mihailo pass (right). Defensive positions of the winter of 1683-84 are noted in magenta; very small towns and villages are in green and large towns are indicated in yellow.

King Ivan was greatly
encouraged by the progress of his campaign (naturally enough, he now had
control of Klow, the strategic hub of Syldavia) and the trouble that his
enemies found themselves in. After
leaving a garrison in Klow, Ivan attempted to exploit his advantage by eliminating
Bordurian detachments in western Wladruja that could menace his supply lines
and then by attempting to besiege the Bordurian-held fortification of St.
Vladimir Grad, which commanded the frontier between Wladruja and Polishov. It was late in the year however and again the
conduct of a siege proved a challenge for the Syldavian army. With no real progress and few local resources
left to sustain his army, Ivan broke off the siege and retreated to winter
quarters. He established the bulk of his
force in Klow and set up defensive positions at strategic posts controlling
access to the city (Ottokardin, Nie Zilheroum, Klasdroje and Orehovo). He established a new supply depot in Klow and
waited for spring while he cogitated impatiently for a plan of attack.